TOSCA'S KISS. To 3 June.

London

TOSCA’S KISS
by Kenneth Jupp

Orange Tree Theatre To 3 June 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm & 11, 18 May 2.30pm
Audio-described 16 May, 27 May 4pm
Post-show discussion 11, 18 May 2.30pm, 26 May
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 May

Worlds of political machinery and personal consciences collide.
It’s tempting to categorise new plays as ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’. Kenneth Jupp’s drama has its limitations but (encouraged by Auriol Smith’s sympathetic Orange Tree production) it eventually gathers theatrical power while making its point about absolute judgments in the context of the 1945/6 Nuremburg War Crimes tribunal.

It can be clumsy (Smith can’t avoid several lengthy scene-changes), there are too many encumbrances and the play seems slow to get down to business in an age of quick-impact drama. But Jupp’s patient working towards his point brings its final rewards.

The worst encumbrance is the title, thematically relevant though it is. Puccini’s Tosca (or rather original playwright Sardou’s) describes her stabbing of police-chief Scarpia as her ‘kiss’. It’s suggested here that if she’d given in to his sexual demands lives could have been saved. Jupp suggests rather more lives than I suspect would have been the case, and no-one’s going to worry about Scarpia dying, anymore than the Nazis tried at Nuremburg (Churchill’s belief they should have been shot instantly is mentioned twice).

The link necessitates a flock of Tosca references in a situation where they hardly seem natural (even when Puccini’s coincidentally on at the local opera). And applying a 19th century melodrama (with its own historical distortions) to the Nazi aftermath is questionable.

Jupp contrasts post-war realpolitik with moral integrity represented by H G Wells, whose death distresses his former lover, writer Rebecca West. Covering the tribunal, she starts up a liaison with a US legal bigwig, accepting the offers of exclusive interviews he uses to keep her in Germany, away from her husband. Meanwhile, in scenes framing the action, she lectures on integrity.

Julia Watson gives her the tact of a forceful woman in a male world. Fine performances too from David Yelland’s US Judge, Steven Elder as the vehement young prosecutor who cannot face political complexities having seen Dachau concentration camp and, especially, Charles Kay as Hitler’s financier. Kay is calm, confident yet unyielding; his character’s fate is morally dubious but, in the light of post-war Germany, practically right. Such is the world Jupp opens up here.

Rebecca West: Julia Watson
Tom Morton: Steven Elder
Francis Biddle: David Yelland
Hjalmar Schacht: Charles Kay

Director: Auriol Smith
Designer: Sam Dowson
Lighting: John Harris

2006-05-09 10:24:43